Berlusconi Battles Magistrates

Italian Decree Bars Some Imprisonments Before Trial

ROME — Four months after he rode to power on a wave of voter disgust over political corruption, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is at war with the investigating magistrates who disclosed the graft.

At issue is a government decree that bars magistrates from jailing suspects in bribery or corruption cases before trial-unless there is a demonstrated threat that the suspect will flee, is a member of organized crime or is a terriorist.

"Preventive detention must go back to being an exceptional measure," Berlusconi said, and Italy has to "remain a state of law. It has to be kept from becoming a police state."

At a news conference Friday, the millionaire businessman-turned-politician shed his usual smiling, self-possessed persona. He left without answering questions.

In its Saturday editions, The New York Times reported that Berlusconi's spokesman, Giuliano Ferrara, said the government would resign if parliament rejects the decree.

At the news conference, Berlusconi said that Italian magistrates have all the powers they need "to pursue their investigations and trials, to carry out justice and not vendettas."

But the four Milan magistrates leading the 2 1/2-year-old mani pulite (clean hands) investigation, Berlusconi's coalition partners and 83.6 percent of Italians polled by the Directa Institute all disagree with Berlusconi. They called the decree, signed by the Cabinet last Wednesday, a mistake.

Antonio Di Pietro, 44, the magistrate who has become a hero to millions of Italians for his relentless prosecution of once-powerful politicians and businessmen in televised kickback trials, was unshaven and clearly shaken when he appeared on TV Thursday night.

Di Pietro had been Berlusconi's first choice for interior minister, but the former police officer turned down the post to continue working on the mani pulite investigation.

Now, Di Pietro said, he and his fellow magistrates would ask "to be moved as soon as possible to other assignments where there is no clash between what conscience dictates and what the law imposes."

Mani pulite magistrates in Genoa followed suit, and anti-Mafia investigators in Milan expressed "preoccupation and alarm" over the problems they feared the decree would cause their own work just when they finally were about to prove "the ever closer ties between organized crime and economic-financial crime."

Magistrates have found preventive detention a potent weapon, allowing them to jail uncooperative suspects for indeterminate periods. Once the suspect agrees to talk, he or she usually is transferred to house arrest.

The decree limits house arrest only to corruption cases. Those under investigation for bribery are allowed to remain free.

State's Atty. Giulio Catelani in Milan called the magistrates' departure a setback, but he said the investigations will continue with or without them.

"Even in difficult situations you can move forward," he said.

Berlusconi's coalition partners, the federalist Northern League and the neo-fascist National Alliance, said they would work to modify the decree, and the opposition pledged a parliament fight.

Justice Minister Alfredo Biondi tried to act as peacemaker, saying: "Everything can be modified as long as the foundations of the

decree are not overturned."

But Biondi made clear he had no intention of compromising, at least not for now. He attacked the magistrates as prima donnas "disappointed if their names and faces don't appear in newspapers and on television."

Berlusconi's younger brother, Paolo, was jailed briefly this year by magistrates investigating corruption charges against him.

The prime minister did have one important ally, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, with whom he is more often at odds.

Scalfaro opposed preventive detention last year when, within a single week, Gabriele Cagliari, former head of the state energy group, ENI, suffocated himself with a plastic bag in his prison cell, and Raul Gardini, one of Italy's top businessmen, shot himself to death just before his scheduled arrest.

The decree took effect as soon as it was published, opening the prison doors to an estimated 2,000 businessmen and politicans, including a former health minister and some former members of parliament, accused of corruption.

It also lifted the immediate threat of arrest from Berlusconi's old friend and ally, former Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who has been refusing on medical grounds to return from his seaside home in Tunisia to face prosecution.

To become law, the decree must be approved by both houses of parliament within 60 days.

Lacking the support of his coalition partners, Berlusconi could be in trouble if the vote becomes a confidence measure.